Politics-Administration Dichotomy Or Complementarity: A Case Study Of The Ministry Of Foreign Affairs And Regional Integration’s Conduct Of Ghana’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

Countries all over the world seek to project their national interest through their foreign policies. However, the conduct of foreign policy involves interactions various factors. Again, the formulation and implementation of foreign policy strategies of a state is done through the interplay of political actors and administrators. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the politics-administration in the conduct of foreign policy of Ghana. To do this, the study made use of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration as the case study and was conducted using a qualitative approach through the use of interviews to solicit responses from politicians and administrators at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration. Subsequently, the responses obtained were then analysed interpretatively using various themes. At the end of the analysis, the study found that, the major role of politicians in the conduct of Ghana’s foreign policy is policy formulation whilst administrators were responsible for the actual implementation of the policies. Also, one of the major findings of the study was that, the nature of politics-administration in the conduct of Ghana’s foreign policy is complementary rather than a dichotomy. Again, the study found that, despite this complementarity, political actors often have the tendency to interfere in the implementation process. Besides, political actors in many instances fail to adopt the advice of administrators who are technocrats of foreign policy. Finally, it was found that friction in the ministry between administrators and political actors is often resolved through compromise. In view of the findings, the study recommended that seminars and trainings should be organised regularly to enable political actors especially newly appointed ones to become conversant with the processes and procedures of the ministry in order to reduce frictions between political actors and administrators. Also, a national foreign policy needs to be design to explicitly define the interest of Ghana and the Ghanaian identity to serve as guide to subsequent political leaders.